Mark Twain: A Biography, by Albert Bigelow Paine

Chapter LXXIII

The First Meeting with Howells

Clemens’ first period of editorial work was a brief one, though he made frequent contributions to the paper:
sketches, squibs, travel-notes, and experiences, usually humorous in character. His wedding-day had been set for early
in the year, and it was necessary to accumulate a bank account for that occasion. Before October he was out on the
lecture circuit, billed now for the first time for New England, nervous and apprehensive in consequence, though with
good hope. To Pamela he wrote (November 9th):

To-morrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience — 4,000 critics — and on the success of this
matter depends my future success in New England. But I am not distressed. Nasby is in the same boat. Tonight decides
the fate of his brand-new lecture. He has just left my room — been reading his lecture to me — was greatly depressed. I
have convinced him that he has little to fear.

Whatever alarm Mark Twain may have felt was not warranted. His success with the New England public was immediate and
complete. He made his headquarters in Boston, at Redpath’s office, where there was pretty sure to be a congenial
company, of which he was presently the center.

It was during one of these Boston sojourns that he first met William Dean Howells, his future friend and literary
counselor. Howells was assistant editor of the Atlantic at this time; James T. Fields, its editor. Clemens had been
gratified by the Atlantic review, and had called to express his thanks for it. He sat talking to Fields, when Howells
entered the editorial rooms, and on being presented to the author of the review, delivered his appreciation in the form
of a story, sufficiently appropriate, but not qualified for the larger types.65

65 [He said: “When I read that review of yours, I felt like
the woman who was so glad her baby had come white.”]

His manner, his humor, his quaint colloquial forms all delighted Howells — more, in fact, than the opulent sealskin
overcoat which he affected at this period — a garment astonishing rather than esthetic, as Mark Twain’s clothes in
those days of his first regeneration were likely to be startling enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere
of the Atlantic rooms. And Howells — gentle, genial, sincere — filled with the early happiness of his calling, won the
heart of Mark Twain and never lost it, and, what is still more notable, won his absolute and unvarying confidence in
all literary affairs. It was always Mark Twain’s habit to rely on somebody, and in matters pertaining to literature and
to literary people in general he laid his burden on William Dean Howells from that day. Only a few weeks after that
first visit we find him telegraphing to Howells, asking him to look after a Californian poet, then ill and friendless
in Brooklyn. Clemens states that he does not know the poet, but will contribute fifty dollars if Howells will petition
the steamboat company for a pass; and no doubt Howells complied, and spent a good deal more than fifty dollars’ worth
of time to get the poet relieved and started; it would be like him.